How to configure Qtspeech - definitely moving forward!

[Simion]

Hi Gustav,
no problem about the name, it happens all the time :-)

about the voices, those natural voices are compatible with Microsoft 
Speech API,
when I was using Widows and later in Wine I used a program called 
"ReadPlease 2003", the program is abandoned  now but it still works and 
it should work with any  voice that are compatible with Windows but I 
never tried. The feature this program has and I never found in other 
programs is that it highlights the current line or word that is spoken, 
this makes it easy  to go back one paragrpah or 2 if you were interupted 
or want to hear something again and also easy to skip forward if you hit 
some paragraphs with mathematical equations. As I said I suggest to get 
used of using faster and faster voices, your family will understand and 
you will read same texts 2 times faster so you gain time, at that speed 
any voice will sound robotic, this would not work if you want other to 
listen with you (but you can have a normal speed and a fast speed talker 
in jovie)


On 9/22/19 2:54 PM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
> Hi Simion,
>
> Sorry about the spelling error, happens often with my vision problems.
>
> You are absolutely right!  The Pause does work!!!  I just have to wait
> till it gets to the end of the sentence or sometimes paragraph.  But
> that is fine.  And now with the Keyboard Shortcuts, Jovie is great!  I
> read a lot of articles in Medicine and I am often interrupted.  If I can
> not pause and resume it is often a struggle to find where I was
> listening.  This is great!!!
>
>  From what you and others are saying and from what I've read, I think I
> understand better.  Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you have to tell
> speech-dispatcher which voice (e-speak, festival, etc.) to use?  If I
> can figure out how to tell speech-dispatcher which voice to use then
> Jovie (or Qtspeech) will then output my choice?  I have looked into it,
> and there are several (about 6 different) voices I can use in Linux.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion about Wine.  I am familiar with it and have
> tried it many times.  If I could find a Windows program to do what Jovie
> does, I certainly would try to use it with Wine.  I tried a lot of
> programs in Windows to just simply read out selected text and I never
> found a simple and easy one. I gave up.  Now with the Keyboard Shortcuts
> defined, Jovie is great.  I am sorry it is being deprecated.  But that
> is what happens in Linux and I am very used to it, it's the price for
> constant improvement in the system as a whole.
>
> Thanks a lot for your help, Gustav
>
> On 9/22/19 2:59 AM, Simion wrote:
>> Hi Gustav
>> about the Pause button, I think is not instant, it need to finish the
>> phrase, can you try to Pause  and wait half a minute and see if I am
>> right about this.
>> My fixes are not related to this, mostly I found bugs when sending
>> text to Jovie from scripts and sending weird values , Other bug was
>> about changing talkers (I use an english and a romanian talker)
>>
>> About better voices, Jovie uses speech dispatcher and this one uses
>> festival or espeak depending on how is configured, so you need to
>> google those programs.
>> I do not know if those natural sounding voices are compatible with
>> this Linux programs,  other alternative is to try Windows programs in
>> Wine, I did this a many years back and it worked.
>>
>> Btw you did not read my name correctly, is  Simion , don't worry
>> about it though, it happens all the time
>>
>> On 9/22/19 2:22 AM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>> Hi Simon,
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot. I found how to configure the shortcuts.  I configured 4 -
>>> Read clipboard, Stop, Pause, Resume.  All work fine except Pause.  It
>>> works only 20% of the time.  I often have to repeat the shortcut over
>>> and over to get it to pause, and often it does not pause.  When it
>>> does,
>>> Resume always works.  This is the same behavior I have always had with
>>> the tray icon and why I had given up trying to use it.  If your fixes
>>> fix this then I would certainly be very pleased.  I don't need any
>>> other
>>> functionality other than the voices.  People are always around and
>>> using
>>> the headphone  adds another cable to my already cluttered desk.  I
>>> would
>>> still very much like to be able to at least TRY different voices.  But
>>> the documentation for doing this with Jovie, has been very hard to come
>>> by and I have not been able to find any that really describes how to do
>>> it.  Only a bit here and there of partial information that I can not
>>> put
>>> together.  Thanks for yours and others efforts, Gustav
>>>
>>> On 9/18/19 4:31 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>> Hi Gustav,
>>>> You can use keyboard shortcuts to control Jovie, you need to create
>>>> this shortcuts, you can do it in system Settings, keyboard shortucts,
>>>> Global section I think. I have a keyboard with an extra row of Media
>>>> keys so I use those buttons . I use a voice with max speed (I had to
>>>> train by incrementally increasing it) so it is weird for others to
>>>> understand, the solution is to use headphones when others are around.
>>>> I tried finding more natural sounding voices but I discovered that I
>>>> prefer  faster speed so I can read things faster and the voice is
>>>> not
>>>> important at all.
>>>>
>>>> My commit messages  in Github explain what bugs fix, if you are not
>>>> affected by those you can use the version from your repos.
>>>>
>>>> The only issue I have now is in this scenario:
>>>> I open say 3 articles  in browser, use reader mode if needed, copy
>>>> paste them in clipboard one by one and have jovie read the clipboard
>>>>
>>>> so now I have the 1,2,3 articles in a list to be read and Jovie is
>>>> reading the1st one,
>>>> if I use Pause and then Resume while reading article 1 , it reads
>>>> Article 2, 3 and finaly it continues to finish Article 1 . It did not
>>>> bother me that much to fix the bug though.
>>>>
>>>> When Jovie will not work I am considering  write a replacement,
>>>> maybe
>>>> in Python or JS so anyone can read the code, edit and try fixing or
>>>> extending it the current solution where you would use QtSpeech that
>>>> wraps speechdispatcher that wraps festival or espeak is cery
>>>> convolutede, QtSpeech was bugged when I tested it and I am not that
>>>> good at programming to build Qt from source and try to fix it I also
>>>> prefer to use LTS distributions
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 9/18/19 2:20 AM, Gustav Degreef wrote:
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, I am also still using Jovie.  I use it only from the tray
>>>>> icon.  I
>>>>> select the text, copy from context menu and then click on the tray
>>>>> icon
>>>>> and select to speak clipboard contents. The only other functionality I
>>>>> can use is to stop the speaking at some point.  I have tried to
>>>>> pause
>>>>> and resume from the tray icon (which is the main functionality that I
>>>>> would like) but it never works properly.  I have tried to configure
>>>>> jovie to use a different voice than e-speak but i have read and
>>>>> read and
>>>>> never succeeded.  E-speak is fine for me, but it drives my wife
>>>>> crazy,
>>>>> and my friends hat the voice, no matte how i change the various
>>>>> settings.  I can continue to use Jovie (without Qtspeech) as
>>>>> long as it
>>>>> keeps working.  But since it is deprecated, I am trying to be
>>>>> prepared
>>>>> when it no longer works.  That is the only reason I am trying to
>>>>> move
>>>>> from Jovie.  Thanks a lot for your input.  I would like to
>>>>> try your
>>>>> modifications., Gustav.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 9/17/19 9:58 AM, Simion wrote:
>>>>>> Hi, I am still using Jovie, it is still present in Kubuntu 18.04
>>>>>> repositories.
>>>>>> When Jovie will be removed from the repos I think I may try to write
>>>>>> some scripts and some GUi if needed to replace it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In my humble opinion we Linux users we need some cross desktop basic
>>>>>> application, I am not sure about the desktop integration part but
>>>>>> from
>>>>>> what I seen when testing QtSpeech it  makes more sense for
>>>>>> me to
>>>>>> avoid the extra Qt abstraction or make multiple backends.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> out of curiosity what Jovie features you use?
>>>>>> I use the following
>>>>>> - the dbus /command line interface to call Jovie from scripts
>>>>>> - the Global shortcuts
>>>>>> - the context menu in the tray icon to change languages(that I
>>>>>> contributed)